Part 5

"'Cause we've got another patient."

"Who is it?" she asked, quickly.

"Come and see."

She followed the man to the rear of the house, where, upon a stone which had fallen from the wall, Dr. Horton was sitting, his head bent in slumber. She listened a moment to his heavy breathing, laid her hand upon his forehead, and turned silently away.

A bed was made ready, and the young doctor, still wrapped in the heavy sleep of disease, was laid upon it, and one of the men was sent for Dr. Starkey.

In the delirium which marks the first stages of the disease, young Horton would allow no one but Lilly O'Connell to minister to him. Sometimes he imagined himself a boy, and called her "mother," clinging to her hand, and moaning if she made the least effort to withdraw. At other times, another face haunted him, and another name, coupled with endearing words or tender reproaches, fell from the half-unconscious lips.

Who but a woman can comprehend the history of those days and nights of watching and waiting? Each morning found her more marble-pale; purple rings formed themselves about the large eyes, but a deep, steady light, which was not born of pain and suffering, shone in their clear depths.

At last, one night, the crisis, whose result no human judgment could foretell, was at hand. No delirium, no restlessness now--only a deep sleep, in which the tense muscles relaxed and the breath came as softly as a child's.

Widow Gatchell shared the young girl's watch, but the strain of the last month had told upon her, and toward morning she fell asleep, and Lilly kept her vigil alone. Only the ticking of the old clock in the hall and the breathing of the sleepers broke the deep silence which filled the house. The lamp threw weird shadows across the ceiling and over the disfigured face upon the pillow. Of all manly beauty, only the close-clustering chestnut hair remained, and the symmetrical hands which lay nerveless and pale, but unmarred, upon the spread.

Statue-like, the young girl sat by the bed-side, her whole soul concentrated in the unwavering gaze which rested upon the sleeper's face. A faint--ever so faint--murmur came at last from the hot, swollen lips, and one languid hand groped weakly, as if seeking something. She took it gently and held it between her own soft palms. It seemed to her fine touch that a light moisture was discernible upon it. She rose and bent over the pillow with eager eyes. A storm of raptured feeling shook her. She sank upon her knees by the bed, and pressed the hand she held close against her breast, whispering over it wild words which no ear might hear.

All at once, the fingers which had lain so inert and passive in her grasp seemed to her to thrill with conscious life, to return faintly the pressure of her own. She started back.

A ray of dawning light crept under the window-shade and lay across the sick man's face. His eyes were open, and regarding her with a look of perfect intelligence.

The girl rose with a smothered cry, and laid the drooping hand upon the bed. The dark, gentle eyes followed her beseechingly. It seemed as if he would have spoken, but the parched lips had lost their power.

She went to the sleeping woman and touched her shoulder.

"Sarah, I think he is better," she said, her voice trembling.

Instantly, the old nurse was on the alert. She went to the bed, and laid her hand upon the sick man's forehead and wrist, then turned toward Lilly, with a smile.

"Go and take some rest," she said in a whisper. "The crisis has passed. He will live."

Dr. Horton's recovery was not rapid, but it was sure.

From the hour of his return to consciousness, Lilly O'Connell had not entered his room.

When a week had passed, he ventured to question his faithful attendant, Widow Gatchell, in regard to her. For twenty-four hours he had missed the step and voice he had believed to be hers, passing and repassing the hall outside his door. The old woman turned her back abruptly and began stirring the already cheerful fire.

"She ain't quite so well to-day," she answered, in a constrained voice.

The young man raised his head.

"Do you mean that she is sick?" he asked hastily.

"She was took down last night," the widow answered, hesitating, and would have left the room; but the young man beckoned her, and she went to his side.

"Let everything possible be done for her," he said. "You understand--everything that _can_ be done. Let Mason attend to me."

"I'll do _my_ part," the old nurse answered, in the peculiarly dry tone with which she was accustomed to veil her emotions.

Dr. Starkey, who, since the young doctor's illness, had been, perforce, in daily attendance, was closely questioned. His answers, however, being of that reserved and non-committal nature characteristic of the profession, gave little satisfaction, and Horton fell into a way of noticing and interpreting, with the acute sense of the convalescent, each look of his attendant, each sound which came to him, keeping himself in a state of nervous tension which did much toward retarding his recovery.

Three or four days had passed in this way, when one morning, just at daybreak, Dr. Horton was roused from his light sleep by sounds in the hall outside his door--hushed voices, shuffling footsteps, and the sound of some object striking with a heavy thud against the balusters and wall. He raised himself, his heart beating fast, and listened intently. The shuffling steps moved on, down the creaking stairs and across the bare floor below. A door opened and shut, and deep silence filled the house again. He sank back upon his pillow, faint and bewildered, but still listening, and after some moments, another sound reached his ears faintly from a distance--the click of metal against stones and frozen mold.

He had already been able, with some assistance, to reach his chair once or twice a day; now he rose unaided, and without consciousness of pain or weakness, found his way to the window, and pushed aside the paper shade with a shaking hand.

It was a dull, gray morning, and a light snow was falling, but through the thin veil he could see the vague outlines of two men in the pasture opposite, and could follow their stiff, slow motions. They were filling in a grave.

He went to his bed and lay back upon it with closed eyes. When he opened them, Widow Gatchell was standing by him with his breakfast on a tray.

Her swarthy face was haggard, but her eyes were tearless, and her lips set tightly together. He put his hand out and touched hers.

"I know," he said, softly.

The woman put the tray on the table, and sank upon a chair. She cleared her throat several times before speaking.

"Yes," she said, at last, in her dry, monotonous voice. "She is gone. We did all we could for her, but 'twarn't no use. She was all wore out when she was took. Just afore she died she started up and seized hold o' my hand, her eyes all soft an' shinin', an' her mouth a-smilin'. 'Sarah,' says she, 'I shall know the meaning of it now!' The good Lord only knows what she meant--her mind was wanderin', most likely--but them was her last words, 'I shall know the meanin' of it now, Sarah!'"

The old woman sat a while in silence, with the strange repressed look which watching by so many death-beds had fixed upon her face; then, arranging the breakfast upon the stand, went out again.

It snowed persistently all day. From the chair by the window, Doctor Horton watched it falling silently, making everything beautiful as it fell,--rude wall, and gnarled tree, and scraggy, leafless bush,--and covering those low, unsightly mounds with a rich and snowy pall. He watched it until night fell and shut it from his sight.

Lilly O'Connell's was the last case. The disease seemed meantime to have spent its force, and in a few weeks the unbroken silence of midwinter rested over the drear and forlorn spot.

Doctor Horton was again at home. He was thin, and his face showed some traces of the disease from which he had just recovered, but they were slight, and such as would pass away in time. The pleasant chamber where he was sitting was filled with evidences of care and attention, for every woman in Ridgemont, old or young, desired to show in some way her admiration and esteem for the young physician. Fruit and jellies and flowers and books filled every available place.

He was seated before a cheerful fire. Upon the table by his side lay many papers and letters, the accumulation of several weeks. One letter, of a recent date, was open in his hand. A portion of it ran thus:

"* * * It has been very gay here this season, and mother and Aunt Kitty have insisted upon my going out a great deal. But I have had no heart in it, dearest, especially since I knew that you were ill. I assure you, I was almost ill myself when I heard of it. How thankful I am that you are convalescent. I long to see you so much, but Aunt Kitty does not think I ought to return before spring. Oh Roger, _do_ you think you are much changed? * * *"

Shading his eyes with his thin hand, he sat a long time in deep thought. At last, rousing himself, he went to his desk and wrote as follows:

"MY DEAR FLORENCE: I _am_ changed; so much that you would not know me; so much that I hardly know myself; so much, indeed, that it is better we do not meet at present.

R. H."

With a smile so bitter that it quite transformed his genial, handsome face, he read and re-read these lines.

"Yes," he said aloud, "it is the right way, the only way," and he sealed and directed the letter, and went back to his reverie by the fire.

Lilly O'Connell's death made a deep impression in the village. That which her life, with all its pain and humiliation and loneliness, its heroic struggles, its quiet, hard-won victories, had failed to do, the simple story of her death accomplished. It was made the subject of at least two eloquent discourses, and for a time her name was on every tongue. But it was only for a time, for when, in the course of years, the graves in the pasture were opened, and the poor remains of mortality removed by surviving friends to sacred ground, her grave remained undisturbed.

It was not forgotten, however. One day in June, when the happy, teeming earth was at her fairest, Dr. Horton drove out of the village, and turning into the grass-grown, untraversed road, went on to the scene of the past winter's tragedy of suffering and death. The old house was no longer in existence. By consent of the owner (whose whereabouts had been discovered), and by order of the selectmen of the town, it had been burned to the ground. Where it had stood, two crumbling chimneys rose from the mass of blackened bricks and charred timbers which filled the cellar, the whole draped and matted with luxuriant woodbine and clinging shrubs. Birds brooded over their nests in every nook and cranny of the ruin, and red roses flaunted in the sunshine and sprinkled the gray door-stone with splashes of color. The air was as sweet about it, the sky as blue above it, as if crime and plague were things which had no existence.

Dr. Horton left his horse to browse on the tender leaves of the young birches which grew along the wall, and went down into the pasture. The sod above the graves was green, and starred with small white flowers. There were fifteen graves in all, distinguished only by a number rudely cut upon rough stakes driven into the ground at their heads.

He went slowly among them until he came to one a little apart from the others, in the shadow of the woods which bordered the field. A slender young aspen grew beside it, its quivering leaves shining in the sun. Soft winds blew out from the fragrant woods, and far off in their green depths echoed the exquisite, melancholy note of the wood-thrush. At the foot of the grave, where the grass, nourished by some hidden spring, grew long and lush, a single tiger-lily spread its glowing chalice.

The young man stood there with uncovered head a long, long time. Then, laying his hand reverently upon the sod for one instant, he went away.

Several years have passed since these events. Dr. Horton is still unmarried. This is a source of great regret in the community with which he has become so closely allied, and by which he is held in universal regard and honor. There are some prematurely whitened locks upon his temples, and two or three fine straight lines just above his warm, steadfast eyes, but he is neither a morose nor a melancholy man, and there are those who confidently hope that the many untenanted rooms in the old homestead may yet open to the sunshine of a wife's smile, and echo to the music of childish voices.

It was two years before he met Miss Fairfield, she having spent that time in Europe with her mother and "Aunt Kitty." It was a chance meeting, upon Tremont Street, in Boston. He was in the act of leaving a store as she entered, accompanied by her mother. He recognized them with a friendly and courteous bow, and passed on.

Miss Fairfield leaned against the counter with a face white as snow.

"He is not--changed--so very much," she whispered to her mother.

Mrs. Fairfield, who had had her own ideas all along, kept a discreet silence.

The Fairfields spend a part of their time in Ridgemont, and the elegant little phaeton and the doctor's buggy often pass each other on the street; the occupants exchange greetings, and that is all.

Miss Fairfield is Miss Fairfield still. Always elegant and artistic in her dress, she is not quite the same, however. The porcelain tints have faded, and there is a sharpness about the delicate features, and a peevishness about the small pink lips. She is devoted to art. She paints industriously, and with fair result. Her tea-sets are much sought after, and she "spends her winters in Boston."

THIRZA.

She stood by the window, looking out over the dreary landscape, a woman of some twenty-five years, with an earnest, even melancholy face, in which the wistful brown eyes were undoubtedly the redeeming feature. Jones' Hill, taken at its best, in full parade uniform of summer green, was not renowned for beauty or picturesqueness, and now, in fatigue dress of sodden brown stubble, with occasional patches of dingy white in ditches and hollows and along the edges of the dark pine woods, was even less calculated to inspire the beholder with enthusiasm. Still, that would hardly account for the shadow which rested upon Thirza Bradford's face. She ought, in fact, to have worn a cheerful countenance. One week before she had been a poor girl, dependent upon the labor of her hand for her daily bread; to-day she was sole possessor of a farm of considerable extent, the comfortable old house at one of whose windows she was now standing, and all that house's contents.

One week before she had been called to the bed-side of her aunt, Abigail Leavitt. She had arrived none too soon, for the stern, sad old woman had received her summons, and before another morning dawned had passed away.

To her great surprise, Thirza found that her aunt had left her sole heiress of all she had possessed. Why she should have been surprised would be difficult to explain. Aunt Abigail's two boys had gone to the war and never returned, her husband had been dead for many years, and Thirza was her only sister's only child, and sole surviving relative. Nothing, therefore, was more natural than this event, but Thirza had simply never thought of it. She had listened, half in wonder, half in indifference, to the reading of the will, and had accepted mechanically the grudgingly tendered congratulations of the assembled farmers and their wives.

She had been supported in arranging and carrying out the gloomy details of the funeral by Jane Withers, a spinster of a type peculiar to New England; one of those persons who, scorning to demean themselves by "hiring out," go about, nevertheless, from family to family, rendering reluctant service, "just to accommodate" (accepting a weekly stipend in the same spirit of accommodation, it is to be supposed). With this person's assistance, Thirza had prepared the repast to which, according to custom, the mourners from a distance were invited on their return from the burying-ground. Aunt Abigail had been stricken down at the close of a Saturday's baking, leaving a goodly array upon the pantry shelves, a fact upon which Jane congratulated herself without any attempt at concealment, observing, in fact, that the melancholy event "couldn't have happened handier." In vain had Thirza protested--Jane was inflexible--and she had looked on with silent horror, while the funeral guests devoured with great relish the pies and ginger-bread which the dead woman's hand had prepared.

"Mis' Leavitt were a master hand at pie-crust," remarked one toothless dame, mumbling at the flaky paste, "a _master_ hand at pie-crust, but she never were much at bread!" whereupon the whole feminine conclave launched out into a prolonged and noisy discussion of the relative merits of salt-risin's, milk-emptin's, and potato yeast.

That was three or four days ago, and Thirza had remained in the old house with Jane, who had kindly proffered her services and the solace of her companionship. There had been little to do in the house, and that little was soon done, and now the question of what she was to do with her new acquisition was looming up before her, and assuming truly colossal proportions. She was thinking of it now as she stood there with the wistful look upon her face, almost wishing that Aunt Abigail had left the farm to old Jabez Higgins, a fourth or fifth cousin by marriage, who had dutifully appeared at the funeral, with a look as if he had that within which passed showing, and doubtless he had, for he turned green and blue when the will was read, and drove off soon after at a tearing pace.

Jane, having condescended to perform the operation of washing up the two plates, cups, etc., which their evening meal had brought into requisition, entered presently, knitting in hand, and seated herself with much emphasis in a low wooden chair near the window. She was an erect and angular person, with an aggressive air of independence about her, a kind of "just-as-good-as-you-are" expression, which seemed to challenge the observer to dispute it at his peril. She took up the first stitch on her needle, fixed her sharp eyes upon Thirza, and, as if in answer to her thoughts, opened on her as follows:

"Ye haint made up yer mind what ye're a-goin' ter dew, hev ye?"

Thirza slowly shook her head, without looking around.

"It's kind o' queer now how things does work a-round. There you was a-workin' an' a-slavin' in that old mill, day in an' day out, only a week ago, an' now you can jest settle right down on yer own place an' take things easy."

Thirza vaguely wondered why Aunt Abigail had never "taken things easy."

"I shouldn't wonder a mite," went on Jane, with increasing animation, "I shouldn't wonder a single mite if you should git a husband, after all!"

Thirza's pale face flushed, and she made an involuntary gesture of impatience with one shoulder.

"Oh, ye needn't twist around so," said the undaunted spinster, dryly. "Ye ain't no chicken, laws knows, but ye needn't give up all hopes. Ye're twenty-five if ye're a day, but that ain't nothin' when a woman's got a farm worth three thousand dollars."

Three thousand dollars! For the first time her inheritance assumed its monetary value before Thirza's eyes. Hitherto she had regarded it merely as an indefinite extent of pastures, woods, and swamps--but three thousand dollars! It sounded like a deal of money to her, who had never owned a hundred dollars at one time in her life, and her imagination immediately wandered off into fascinating vistas, which Jane's prosaic words had thrown open before her. She heard, as in a dream, the nasal, incisive voice as it went on with the catalogue of her possessions.

"Yes, it's worth three thousand dollars, if it's worth a cent! I heerd Squire Brooks a-tellin' Orthaniel Stebbins so at the funeral. An' then, here's the house. There ain't no comfortabler one on Joneses' Hill, nor one that has more good furnitoor an' fixin's in it. Then there's Aunt Abigail's clo'es an' things. Why, ter my _sartain_ knowledge there's no less'n five real good dresses a-hangin' in the fore-chamber closet, ter say nothin' of the bureau full of under-clo'es an' beddin'." Jane did not think it necessary to explain by what means this "sartain knowledge" had been achieved, but continued: "There's a silk warp alpacky now, a-hangin' up there, why--it's e'en-a-most as good as new! The creases ain't out on't." (Unsophisticated Jane! not to know that the creases never _do_ go out of alpaca.) "I don't see what in the name o' sense ye're a-goin' ter dew with all them dresses. It'll take ye a life-time ter wear 'em out. If _I_ hed that silk warp alpacky now,"--she continued musingly, yet raising her voice so suddenly that Thirza started; "if _I_ hed that are dress, I should take out two of the back breadths for an over-skirt--yes--an' _gore_ the others!" This climax was delivered in triumphant tone. Then lowering her voice she continued, reflectively: "Aunt Abigail was jest about my build."

Thirza caught the import of the last words.

"Jane," said she, languidly, with an undertone of impatience in her voice (it was hard to be recalled from her pleasant wanderings by a silk warp alpaca!), "Jane, you can have it."

"Wh--what d'ye say?" inquired Jane, incredulously.

"I said you could have that dress; I don't want it," repeated Thirza.

Jane sat a moment in silence before she trusted herself to speak. Her heart was beating with delight, but she would not allow the smallest evidence of joy or gratitude to escape in word or look.

"Wall," she remarked, coolly, after a fitting pause, "ef you haint got no use for it, I might take it, I s'pose. Not that I'm put tew it for clo'es, but I allers did think a sight of Aunt Abigail----"

Her remarks were interrupted by an exclamation from Thirza. The front gate opened with a squeak and closed with a rattle and bang, and the tall form of Orthaniel Stebbins was seen coming up the path. Orthaniel was a mature youth of thirty. For length and leanness of body, prominence of elbow and knee joints, size and knobbiness of extremities, and vacuity of expression, Orthaniel would have been hard to match. He was attired in a well-preserved black cloth suit, with all the usual accessories of a rustic toilet. His garments seemed to have been designed by his tailor for the utmost possible display of the joints above mentioned, and would have suggested the human form with equal clearness, if buttoned around one of the sprawling stumps which were so prominent a feature in the surrounding landscape. On this particular occasion there was an air of importance, almost of solemnity, about his person, which, added to a complacent simper, born of a sense of the delicate nature of his present errand, produced in his usually blank countenance something almost amounting to expression.

At first sight of this not unfamiliar apparition, Thirza had incontinently fled, but Jane received the visitor with becoming impressiveness.

"Good-evenin', Mr. Stebbins. Walk right into the fore-room," she remarked, throwing open the door of that apartment of state.

"No need o' puttin' yourself out, marm; the settin'-room's good enough for me," graciously responded the gentleman.

"Walk right in," repeated Jane, throwing open one shutter, and letting in a dim light upon the scene--a veritable chamber of horrors, with its hideous carpet, hair-cloth chairs and sofa, the nameless abominations on its walls, and its general air of protest against the spirit of beauty and all that goes to make up human comfort.